3 Ways You Can Combine Print And Digital Marketing Campaigns

As per CMI’s Annual Report of 2015, the top three paid forms of advertising used in the B2B sphere in all of North America are search engine marketing, print or other offline promotion methods and traditional online banner ads. Out of these three, the second one, that is, print or offline promotion methods account for about 57% in terms of popularity among business enterprises. The other two methods account for 66% and 55%, the bigger share being for search engine marketing of course.

Now clearly, this means that digital methods of marketing have conquered the world of marketing on the whole for sure. But what this also means is that print marketing is not dead.

Even though print marketing may seem outdated or old school for a few businesses, especially the ones directed towards the Gen Z, print marketing can do more than you think. However, it does not mean that you need to rely on print alone.

“A winning marketing strategy in this day and age, is one that combines the best of both worlds” says, Stephanie William, Marketing Manager at Rayacom.

So here are 3 ways in which you can get started on effectively combining print and digital marketing campaigns:

1. QR codes – QR codes accompanied by personalized URLs are one of the most popular ways of combining print and digital marketing. The benefit of this method is twofold; when a customer scans a QR code on a print ad and enters your website in their smartphone, not only do you drive them to your online campaign but you also get to track and generate some useful and insightful data about the customer, and also about the effectiveness of your print campaigns. For example, you can track the time and place of interaction with your print ad and craft more suitable and intelligent ads according to the location and person.

2. Social media – As we all know social media is one of the most effective tools to reach out to a larger audience in a short period of time. Make the most of this digital element by combining it with your print catalogues. Build a solid follower base first on say Facebook or Instagram. Then you can utilize the platform to disseminate your print catalogues as part of your offline campaign. It can be done the other way round as well, that is, you can hand out print catalogues at your store to drive them to your website as well.

3. Variable printing – This is basically a technique where you can get personalized images and graphics printed, in regular printing time. You can make use of digitally the gathered data on your online customers to send out marketing material to them. A good occasion to use this would be when you’re running a social media campaign for example. You could invite customers to sign up to receive free goodies, and along with it, marketing material. This also allows you to narrow down different interest groups of customers according to the data, and send out printed material as appropriate.